The Little Red Hen Project 1.

This semester we are doing a project at a primary school with my groupmates at university. We are preparing materials for the children and we are going to teach them three times in November. I thought I would share the details of the process with you here.

We are going to work with the tale of The Little Red Hen.
Here you can find a great version of the story with a couple of activities.

Today we brainstormed some art and craft ideas which could be used with the story, such as:
- headbands
- paper-plate hen figures
- finger puppets
- and printable hen puppets.
(Just click the links to see the pictures.)

We also talked about songs and rhymes to be taught in connection with the story. These can also be used in other contexts. Below you can read all rhymes and songs we discussed.

For the topic of growth:

I found a cherry stone
I put it in the ground
When I went to look at it
A little shoot I found.
The little shoot grew day by day,
It grew into a tree,
I went to pick the cherries
And had them for my tea.

For the topic of eating:

I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I am,
For bread, cheese, eggs and ham,
For cake, cookies, chocolate and jam,
I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I am.

(If the children already know some words connected to food and eating, you can ask them what they like eating, and include their own favourites in the rhyme instead of bread, cheese, etc. You only have to keep the words 'ham' and 'jam'.)

For the topic of baking bread:

1. This is the way we plant the seed, we plant the seed, we plant the seed
    This is the way we plant the seed
    Early in the morning.
2. This is the way we water the seed ...
3. This is the way we cut the wheat...
4. This is the way we go to the mill...
5. This is the way we make the dough...
6. This is the way we bake the bread...
7. This is the way we eat the bread...

For the topic of baking a cake:

Pat a cake, pat a cake baker's man
Bake me a cupcake as fast as you can
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B
Put it in the oven for baby and me

Here you can listen to the song on youtube:
(In the first part there is only the rhyme version, but then they also sing it as a song.)

And finally, there are some language areas that can be discussed in connection with The Little Red Hen story:
- the simple past form of some verbs (e.g.: said, was, went, asked, carried, baked, ate...)
- the question "Who will help me?" and the answers? "Not I" and "I will"
- the expression "all by herself"
- expressions of the stages of the process of baking bread
- adjectives: little, red, noisy, yellow, lazy, sleepy, tired


So, that's where we are now, I hope it will be useful for you too.

All the best,
Kata